Duffill Telsnig, Jessica I. and Jennings, Simon and Mill, Aileen C. and Walker, Nicola D. and Parnell, Andrew and Polunin, Nicholas V.C. (2018) Estimating contributions of pelagic and benthic pathways to consumer production in coupled marine food webs. Journal of Animal Ecology, 88 (3). pp. 405-415. ISSN 0021-8790

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Abstract

1. Pelagic and benthic systems usually interact, but their dynamics and production rates differ. Such differences influence the distribution, reproductive cycles, growth rates, stability and productivity of the consumers they support. Consumer preferences for, and dependence on, pelagic or benthic production are governed by the availability of these sources of production and consumer life history, distribution, habitat, behavioural ecology, ontogenetic stage and morphology. 2. Diet studies may demonstrate the extent to which consumers feed on prey in pelagic or benthic environments. But they do not discriminate benthic production directly supported by phytoplankton from benthic production recycled through detrital pathways. The former will track the dynamics of phytoplankton production more closely than the latter. We develop and apply a new analytical method that uses carbon (C) and sulfur (S) natural abundance stable isotope data to assess the relative contribution of pelagic and benthic pathways to fish consumer production. 4. For 13 species of fish that dominate community biomass in the northern North Sea (estimated >90% of total biomass), relative modal use of pelagic pathways ranged from <25% to >85%. Use of both C and S isotopes as opposed to just C reduced uncertainty in relative modal use estimates. Temporal comparisons of relative modal use of pelagic and benthic pathways revealed similar ranking of species dependency over four years, but annual variation in relative modal use within species was typically 10-40%. 5. For the total fish consumer biomass in the study region, the C and S method linked approximately 70% and 30% of biomass to pelagic and benthic pathways respectively. As well as providing a new method to define consumers’ links to pelagic and benthic pathways our results demonstrate that a substantial proportion of fish biomass, and by inference production, in the northern North Sea is supported by production that has passed through transformations on the seabed.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Cite as: Duffill Telsnig, JI, Jennings, S, Mill, AC, Walker, ND, Parnell, AC, Polunin, NVC. Estimating contributions of pelagic and benthic pathways to consumer production in coupled marine food webs. J Anim Ecol. 2019; 88: 405– 415. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.12929
Keywords:	Bayesian mixing model; benthic-pelagic coupling; fish; food webs; marine ecosystems; stable isotope analysis;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Science and Engineering > Research Institutes > Hamilton Institute Faculty of Science and Engineering > Mathematics and Statistics
Item ID:	14026
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.12929
Depositing User:	Andrew Parnell
Date Deposited:	16 Feb 2021 16:37
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal of Animal Ecology
Publisher:	Wiley
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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